


Memento Mori

by kangeiko



Series: The Erinyes Cycle [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Team as Family, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, past Steve Rogers/Peggy Carter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-27 22:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13890804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: Steve had forgotten that Tony favoured attrition warfare as a tactic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I thought I was done with a one-shot, but it turns out I'm really not. Apparently I really needed to do a fix-it of sorts by traumatising both Steve and Tony some more. (Hey, shared trauma is a tried and tested bonding activity, right?)

The funerals became the backdrop to normality. There had been a few discussions around whether expedited burial might be considered in view of the circumstances, but it seemed that this was a line that even the most hardened politician dared not cross, and so the funeral homes and coroner’s offices were given state aid and allowed to draft in military support to process the backlog individually.

Most businesses opened up again within a few days of the all-clear being given, and the communities began to pitch in to the recovery efforts. There were regular, reassuring addresses from politicians of all political backgrounds, and even the UN made an appearance, blue-beret peacekeepers helping dig people out of the rubble.

New York, like London, like Birnin Zana, like Berlin, like Paris, had become a war zone. The death toll had climbed into the millions, and would likely continue to rise as the impact of the destroyed infrastructure took its toll in the months to come. The hospitals were over-stretched, the water supply had become contaminated, and the food shipments brought into the city had be guarded against the opportunists and the desperate alike.

They won, Steve would remind himself each morning as he put on a black suit and headed out for another funeral, another memorial service. That was the important thing. Despite the cost, despite the horror of it, they had been victorious. They had stemmed the tide.

He passed one of the few intact shop windows as he crossed into Manhattan, heading for the cemetery and instinctively averted his eyes. His reflection was bruised and tired-looking, not even the serum being able to erase the last few weeks from his body entirely. There was a scar disappearing down his neck that was still red and flushed, still in the process of knitting together and regenerating.

They won.

*

“Agent Julia Peterson gave her life to save others -”

Steve couldn’t remember having met Agent Peterson. Her photo - hurriedly blown-up on cheap A4 paper and placed in a frame near the closed casket - was of a dignified-looking woman in her mid-thirties, with dark eyes and a kind smile. She looked more like a schoolteacher than a SHIELD agent. But, then, he hadn’t spotted Sharon as an agent, so maybe his expectations were awry.

A little further away from him, on Steve’s right, Tony stood beside Maria Hill, his back ramrod straight. He had been at most of the same funerals that Steve had attended - mainly the SHIELD and superhero ones, although Steve had made it a point to go to the military ones as well - and had somehow always ended up in a different section of the procession. Once - as Steve had tried to catch up with him after the service was done and the body put in the ground - he had almost broken into a run in his hurry to get away.

Steve had left him alone after that. Tony had still limped a little - a temporary thing, Steve hoped - and his eyes had had dark circles smudged beneath them. He, too, had divided his time between burying the dead and clearing away the rubble. For all that Steve might have wished he could have brought up all that lay between them, it was obvious that Tony had no wish to do so.

(That much had been clear since before Steve came back from Wakanda.)

Even on the battlefield, when they’d been facing down impossible odds and Steve had been privately making his peace with his maker, Tony hadn’t so much as looked in his direction outside. The faceplate had been down, and the voice synthesiser had been on, and Steve hadn’t heard Tony’s voice - his real voice, not the relay over the comms - since Siberia.

It was something that Steve was trying to come to terms with. His weren’t the only wishes that mattered here, and he wasn’t sure that he had anything to say that could make things better, that could bridge the gulf that had opened up between them. Maybe he had been right all along: maybe it really had come down to choosing between two of his friends, and there had been no way to keep them both. (Maybe all he was doing in his persistence was making it worse.)

Steve looked down at the empty plot, then back up at the tired faces of the gravediggers. The heavy machinery had all been rerouted to assist with the clearing and removal of rubble, and the digging of the graves had fallen back into the hands of man. The two gravediggers were older, perhaps sixty or so, and maybe that's why they were doing manual labour here instead of at the clearance sites. The fresh young muscle was needed to dig out the corpses, and the old had been left to bury them.

“She leaves behind a husband and two children -”

He glanced to the right, at where Tony was whispering something to Maria Hill, who was shaking her head slowly. Tony caught him looking and looked away, his expression tight.

Maybe Tony was right to avoid him. Maybe this wasn’t something that could be fixed, and it was wrong of him to try. Maybe he had hurt Tony to such an extent that the only thing he could do would be to respect his need for space.

“- Conner, age nine, and Lydia, age four -”

(He was so tired.)

*

After the funeral, Steve stopped by where the remaining family had gathered. The two children were there. The boy was sniffling quietly, his arm around his dry-eyed, bewildered sister.

“But _why_ isn’t she back yet?” The little girl was asking, and something in Steve clenched.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to the husband, and shook the man’s hand.

He, too, seemed more bewildered than anything, his gaze flitting across the different faces of the mourners. He probably didn’t know half of them, Steve realised belatedly. “I worked with your wife,” he said, hoping that it wasn’t too much a stretch of the truth.

The man nodded vaguely. “Yes, she - she said she worked for the government, couldn’t talk about it -” he broke off, jaw clenching. “Thank you for coming,” he managed.

Steve nodded and turned away.

“But, Conner, _why_ -”

It took him a moment to realise that Tony had fallen into step beside him. “Come to the mansion on Sunday,” Tony murmured, looking away. He might as well have been talking to the ground at his feet, his attention resolutely fixed on anything and everything which didn’t include Steve. “Six o’clock. I have something for you.”

He stepped away before Steve could respond.

The funeral procession cleared away in under an hour, another one forming behind it. It was not feasible for any of the mourners to linger, given the backlog and the pressing demands for services. The state had passed emergency powers, seizing cheap brownfield land and hurriedly converting it into burial plots, but there was still a shortage. The mourning would come later, the Governor had said. First, all the dead would be laid to rest.

Tony had finally lost the limp since the last time Steve had seen him, Steve noted, watching him walk away. That was something at least.

“But, daddy -”

(They won, he reminded himself.)

*

The mansion had suffered a couple of minor hits, but nothing that the armour couldn’t handle, obviously. The rubble had been cleared from the property, and the broken windows had been boarded over. (There was a waiting list for window replacement that stretched to months. New York had started bringing in glass from Tennessee, of all places, in an effort to get the buildings still structurally sound back into use; for the time being, wooden planks and cardboard kept out the cold for most of the residents.) In the front yard the landing platform for the Iron Man suit had been set up - pretty hurriedly, if Steve’s inexpert eye was any judge - and Lila Barton was sitting on the edge of circle, holding a doll and swinging her legs.

She brightened when she saw Steve. “Uncle Steve!”

She was off the platform and across the garden in seconds, wrapping herself around Steve’s leg. “You’re here!”

“Hi Lila,” Steve petted her hair awkwardly. “Are your mom and dad here?”

She blinked up at him. “They’re at the funerals. Cooper is watching us. Do you want some cereal?” She grabbed his hand without waiting for an answer and dragged him inside. “Cooper! Look!”

Cooper appeared from what Steve could only assume was the kitchen, carrying a fussing Nathaniel. “Lila, what did I say about yelling when Nate is - oh, hi Uncle Steve! Are you here to see mom and dad? They’re out,” he said, frowning. “Should be back later, though, if you want to wait?” Nate made a dissatisfied noise, gnawing on Cooper’s hand, and Cooper bounced him gently. “Come on, I know it hurts, but it’s just teeth, Nate.” He rooted through the giant bag in the corner of the room and triumphantly extracted a teething ring, presenting it to the baby. Nathaniel made a face and turned away. “Awww, come on…”

“Is - are you visiting Tony?” Steve blurted, then flushed. “I mean…”

Cooper looked at him, puzzled. “We’re staying here for the funerals,” he said, as if it was obvious. “I think we’re going back to the farm in a couple of weeks, though.” He brightened. “Did you want to stay here? I’m sure there’s room.” He looked around vaguely. “The adults are mostly out, they have all the funerals and rebuilding and stuff, so there’s space.”

“That’s kind of you to offer, Cooper,” Steve managed. “But, uh, I think I’m OK. I was actually - I just -”

“Oh, good, you’re here. We’re in the study, don’t dawdle. Cooper, what did I say about going near the gauntlets?” Tony was wearing the same black suit he’d worn at the cemetery; he’d likely been at more burials himself that day. He was waving a half-disassembled gauntlet in Cooper’s face.

The boy looked affronted. “I didn’t touch it!” He glared at his sister. “Lila, were you going near the suit again?”

Lila put her hands behind her back, as if denying them a sweet. “No.” It was not especially convincing.

Tony sighed. “I swear to god, if you blow yourselves up after we survived an extinction event, your dad is never gonna let me hear the end of it. Lila, _how_ many times -”

 _We’re staying here,_ Cooper had said. _We’re staying here,_ and they had been there for long enough for Tony to tell off Lila, for the Bartons to leave their kids in his hands…

(Those were Lila's drawings on the fridge behind Cooper. Nate's baby bag on the floor by Cooper's feet. There were unsupervised children and the detritus of family life spread across the mansion's lavishly appointed kitchen, and those were crayon marks on the wall by Tony's leg, left by a small and furtive hand.)

The Bartons weren't visiting, Steve realised. They weren't staying for a few days so that Clint could attend the SHIELD funerals; or, to be more accurate, they weren't staying just because of that. There was too much permanence in the careless mess in their wake, and in Tony's quiet, amused tolerance of it. There was too much familiarity there.

("I'm going to punch that bastard in the fucking face," Clint had said on the flight back, his hand tight around his bow, rage in his eyes. They had headed back to face Thanos, and all Clint had been able to talk about had been Tony. "After what he did...")

Maybe Steve had been wrong, maybe some things could be fixed.

(Just not what lay between him and Tony.)

Steve crept to the study, closing the door behind him with shaking hands.

A few minutes later Tony walked in, still walking a mile a minute. “Sorry about that, you know how they get. Barton has all the guns safely locked down, of course, but they still don’t treat the gauntlets the same way, and nothing on the security side is gonna work until I get FRIDAY back up and running. And even with the DNA locks I’d still feel safer if they knew to stay away from them in the meantime, you know?” He had his press smile firmly on: bright, understanding, a little sad. He’d perfected it during the first round of interviews after the attacks, reassuring the public that the Avengers were back together; that they had fought off this immense threat and would continue to protect the Earth (and New York, his eyes said) against any future threats; that everything was slowly going back to normal and everyone had suffered losses and what mattered now was coming back together in the aftermath to move on.

Tony’s sad, understanding, reassuring smile was the epitome of _moving on_.

(Steve hated it.)

“Why am I here?” He asked abruptly, then flushed. He hadn’t meant to start off adversarial. “Wait. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Tony stared at him for a moment, calculating. The smile fell off his face. (He looked older as the light faded, fake though it might have been. Tired.) “Sure you did. Well, I wouldn’t want to waste your time, Rogers, let’s get to it, then.” He went to the desk and pulled out a SHIELD-standard secure box from inside one of the drawers. Tony waved a hand at it and took a step back. “This is for you.” There was something fragile about him, in the thinness of his mouth and the sharpness of his look as he stared at Steve, as if challenging him to disagree.

The box was unlocked; Steve could see the seal had been breached. He reached a hand for it, then hesitated, looking back up at Tony, at the tight expression on his face. (It looked almost like grief.) He couldn’t ask, but…

“It’s not booby-trapped, Rogers, for fuck’s sake,” Tony said tiredly, and sat down in the chair behind the desk. He put his head in his hands, as if despairing. “I can’t fucking believe you’d think -”

“That’s not it at all,” Steve cut in. “I just - are you sure, Tony?”

Tony shook his head in answer, leaning back in the chair. “If you want to second-guess me, Rogers, you can do it on your own time, not mine. Either take it or get out.”

So. That’s the way it would be.

He opened the box.

Inside was a single photo, and some folded paper.

“They’re copies,” Tony said to the ceiling. “But the photo is the original.”

Copies of what? A photo of whom?

He reached for the photo, fingers gentle on the yellowed paper. It seemed important, somehow, that he show respect, even if he wasn’t sure what he was looking. (It was important to Tony, and so it was important to him; wasn’t that how it worked? He wished he could express that better; wished he could say it in a way that Tony would believe him.)

Tony spoke, oblivious to Steve’s thoughts. “I thought about not telling you, believe me. But I figured I owed it to her. So here you are. That’s all you’re getting.”

Steve looked down at the photograph in his hands. His breath held; froze.

It was an old photo, dog-eared and much-loved. There was a crease across one corner (top left), and a coffee stain that could just be seen creeping up from the other (bottom right). It was tinted strangely as well; too many greens and mustards and the strange fashions that Steve took a moment to place as being from the seventies. (He’d caught up. Mostly.)

In the photo, a blonde woman was smiling down at a chubby toddler. The baby was laughing, his dark hair untidy, his dark eyes sparkling.

(Even in his sleep, Steve would recognise Tony’s eyes. His smile. It’s all there, in both Tony’s face and in his mother’s.)

It would have hurt less if Tony had punched him.

Slowly, Steve put the photo back in the box, his hand on it to push it away. “Tony,” he said, feeling the words cut like glass on his tongue, bile rising, “why are you giving me this? Why are you giving me a photo of you, and of your - why, Tony?”

Because he didn't understand. It made no sense. Steve can’t explain how he felt about what he did, what it cost, only that it gnaws at him during the night and when he wakes his bones feel heavy and his chest hollow. The guilt and pain of it does not let go when Bucky is there, or when Wanda smiles at him in the sunshine. It does not fade when he is at another funeral, at someone else's loss. It lingers, thick and heavy as smoke, as if he had set alight all that lay between them and was forced to live in the charred remains.

(All he can think about is that he should have found another way. There must have been some way to spare Tony all this pain.) 

He doesn’t need reminders of Tony’s loss. Not when he sees him almost every day standing at another funeral, his hair shot through with grey, his eyes bruised and tired. They live in a world of loss, now, him and Tony and the rest of the world, burying their dead and mourning them when they could.

But - even before then.

Even before the battle, before his days were spent pulling bodies from the rubble, washing the stink of death and rotting meat from his face and hair and collapsing in his bed and wishing for oblivion, before all of that. He’d always known what it was like.

He knows what it’s like to lose your mother too young, to have her be there one day and gone the next. He knows how it would have felt to sit in her room, and go through her things, and wonder whether he had the strength to open up her drawers and go through her private items and underthings and clear what he needed to clear, all the while some small part of him screaming at the sacrilege.

(He'd ended up giving most of it away - to Bucky’s sister, to a friend’s mother, to an ailing neighbour - except for his mother’s favourite dress. That, he had kept folded up in a small case with the rest of the other small mementos and the minutiae of her life he could not bring himself to through away: a hairbrush, the vanity mirror with the mother-of-pearl on the handle that Steve’s dad had bought for her, the half-finished matchbook from the pocket of her apron… )

“Pick it up,” Tony said to him, his voice flat. There was no venom in it, none of the bite that had been there in his greeting. His eyes were dark with rage, his mouth trembling, but Tony’s voice was dry and flat as a year-old corpse. “Pick it up, Rogers, because that is the only thing I’m giving you. And if you turn it down, if you walk away, that’s the end of it.” He gritted his teeth, and some of the emotion bled through then. (It wasn’t hate after all, Steve thought, surprised. It wasn’t hate at all.) “Do you understand? I am _done_.”

(Had Steve sounded that way in the days after he lost his own mother, his voice raw with grief? Had he snapped at Bucky - hovering uselessly, desperately trying to be there for him and not knowing what to do - to get away, to leave him alone, that he was finished, he was done with it? Had he? He doesn’t remember.)

He doesn’t pretend to understand. He doesn’t know what the paper is a replica of, he hasn’t opened it yet to look. But he knows the photo is real.

Tony was giving him a photo of his mother holding him.

(Why? Why would he do this?)

He can’t figure it out. That Tony would want to hurt him, OK, yes, he can understand that. He wishes to God it wasn’t the case, but he can understand it. But why would he choose this? Why would he give him an original photo, one of his memories of his mother? (How could Tony hate him so much, that he’d be willing to give away something so precious just to hurt Steve?)

Slowly, deliberately, Steve plucked the photo from the box, his fingers infinitely careful. He doesn’t know what to do. In that moment of time, Maria Stark looked down at her baby, laughing with him. Her hair was soft around her shoulder, loosely styled, and she wore a simple red sweater. There was something about her smile, Steve thought, and then wondered if he was going mad. There was something about her smile that looked familiar. _Of course there is, she’s Tony’s mother._

Almost idly, he turned it over to see the writing on the back (to hide that smile from view).

_My darling girl and her baby._

The writing was faded. There are no names, and no dates. If you did not know the child was Tony and the woman was his mother, you would never know -

You would never -

 _Peggy,_ he thought, and it was a helpless, horrified hurt. Because he knew that handwriting. He knew the tilt of the E’s and the curve of the Y’s and his heart felt like it was beating so fast it would burst from his chest. _Peggy. Oh my God, Peggy._

Hands numb, he turned the photograph over, back to Maria’s smile and Tony’s chubby babyhood. The edges were peeling away from excessive handling, and it was sun-exposed and well-loved and he could almost make himself believe that this was just Peggy acting as an aunt to Howard’s young wife, acting as godmother to his son, he could almost make himself believe that -

He touched the photograph with trembling fingers, tracing the curve of Maria’s face. She was in profile, the light behind her.

It was the mouth, he thought faintly, pushing through the nausea, through the tightness in his chest. Tony had a hell of a lot of Howard in him, Steve had seen it immediately, of course. The eyes, the hair, even the jawline. But there was something else in there, something about the mouth - his mother’s mouth, Steve had always assumed, with the defined cupid’s bow and the full lower lip - and he could see it now. The same mouth was on the rosy-cheeked toddler and the woman smiling down at him. Steve knew that smile.

His mother had used to smile at him with that same mouth.

_My God, Peggy. What did you do?_

Tony was watching him with hard, flinty eyes. “You can see yourself out,” he said softly, venomously, and turned away.

*


	2. Chapter 2

Early on in the Project Rebirth selection process, the army had made the mistake of having a chaplain on staff. He would lead some of the men in prayer, and would join them for meals. Once, the chaplain had opined - loudly enough to be heard by Colonel Phillips - that there was no such thing as a just war. All war was evil, he had said to Dr Erskine, and all acts contributing towards it ones that would hurt those who carried them out. Each act would extract a price from the soul of those who committed them.

They had been in the mess hall. Steve had been sweaty and exhausted, trying to convince himself to finish his gruel, and Erskine had been… what? Melancholy? Phlegmatic?

(Sad?)

“Perhaps,” Erskine had said, his eyes red-rimmed. “But does that not simply mean that we shall protect our own souls, at the expense of someone else's pain? Is not the price you pay to fight is sometimes a price worth paying, when you consider the alternative?”

_The strong target the weak, that is the way of things,_ Erskine had said to him afterwards. _If you must put yourself in the way of a blow headed for someone weaker, do you not accept the hurt? Do you not embrace it? Some hurts are worth bearing._

And Steve - who had never backed down from a fight, or shied away from taking a punch meant for someone else - had thought it a natural philosophy.

Colonel Phillips - who had overheard the comment - had not been especially pleased to have such philosophical discussions in his mess hall and had had no compunction in saying so, at some great length, both during the meal and in the days that followed. “War is not a goddamn morality play, so you’d best reconsider why you’re on this topic, padre."

(The chaplain had been transferred away the next day.)

The Colonel had said it again the day after, glaring across at where the men were completing their push-ups, and Steve was doing his best to not expire from the effort. “This war’s not a morality play. It’s a necessity.” He’d frowned. “That’s enough, now.” All of them had collapsed on the ground, breathing hard. (Steve barely breathing at all.) There had been an odd look on the Colonel’s face as he’d stared at Steve, seeming to take in his sweat-soaked T-shirt and thin ribs and helpless gulps of air.

Steve had been fairly sure that he had been measured and found wanting.

Later, after the treatment - after Erskine had died - the Colonel’s attitude had not altered, either to the war, or to the project. Steve had been intended as an example of what the serum could do, nothing more. He had been the free taster given away by the drug-peddlers and the gun runners, the sweet taste to get you hooked for more. Whatever Erskine’s plans for the serum, all Phillips had wanted had been a poster boy to show off to secure more funding for the project.

Steve had thought that the war bonds option would be marginally less humiliating than standing in the army’s shop window, knowing there were no wares to sell. (He had been wrong.)

By the time he had finally figured out what he needed to do, it had been almost too late.

*

“Phillips was wrong, you know,” Peggy said to him one evening, a few weeks after he had brought Bucky and the 107th Airborne back safely. The Howlies were all well on their way to getting uproariously drunk, and Bucky had left for the night with some pretty French girl. Steve and Peggy had sat down to talk strategy and drink small beer, and watch the couples dance.

(“You should ask her to dance,” Bucky had whispered to him before he’d left, too loudly for subtlety. “She’s not gonna wait around forever.”)

“About what?”

Peggy smiled a little sadly around her beer, her lips a dark red against the elegant curve of the glass. “What he said about war. It may not be a morality play, or make men evil, but it doesn’t lessen what we do. There’s no shame in saying that it hurts you.”

Steve had never been a particular fan of beer, and even less so after he could no longer feel any effects from it. All he could taste was peat and the faint tang of copper. He pushed his glass away. “What do you mean?”

She toyed with the stem of the glass, glancing away. “Steve. I saw you this morning. It’s alright.” She reached across and put her hand over his. “It’s alright to feel that way.”

_But it isn’t,_ Steve thought, and he could not meet her gaze. _It isn’t, Peggy. You didn’t see what we did. What I did._

That morning, Steve had got up before dawn, and he’d gone out with the Howlies, and they’d reached their designated target. And then, on their way out, the patrol that had supposed to be still out for another twenty minutes had inexplicably shown up early. And because they had been flying under the cover of darkness, and because they couldn’t afford to raise the alarm, they had taken out their knives instead of their pistols.

And in less than two minutes, they had sliced the throats of the entire patrol, all twenty of them.

The last one had been just a boy, maybe no more than seventeen. It had been hard to cut deep, despite Steve’s strength. The knife didn’t want to go in. His hand shook. (The boy had looked at him, shocked.)

The others had died instantly. But that last soldier, that child, had bled and bled and bled, not wounded enough to die quickly. Urine had soaked through his trousers and blood had soaked through his shirt and he’d stared up at Steve with bewildered eyes, disbelieving in death.

When they’d returned triumphant, Steve had gone to find some privacy. 

(He could still smell the boy’s blood as he retched.)

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said roughly. “Please.”

Peggy looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. “Alright. If you change your mind, let me know. Or speak to one of the other guys.” Her eyes were kind. “It’s OK to feel like that, Steve. What we do in war… it’s supposed to feel like this. Because otherwise, otherwise what would that make us?”

Knowing she was right did not make it any easier.

*

Months later, the boy’s shocked face had not faded from his dreams. Instead, he was back in the snow and his neck was open and Bucky was beside him, staring accusingly.

( _Stop,_ he’d begged in his dream, beseeching them both. _Stop, I’m sorry, I’m sorry -_ )

“What can I do?” Peggy asked, an arm around his shoulders. “Steve. Please. What can I do?” She had sought him out in his tent, sitting awkwardly next to him on the narrow cot and reaching up to wrap her arms around him. He was a lot taller and broader than she was now, and so even with him slumping, her arm did not quite reach all the way around him.

Wordlessly, slid to the floor, his head in her lap, his hands in hers. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face against the stiff fabric of her uniform trousers, feeling her fingers come to rest in his hair. “I should have killed him,” he whispered. “If I’d killed Zola instead of trying to capture him…” _If I’d done the right thing and removed that evil from the earth, maybe Bucky would still be alive. But I wanted the intel. I wanted Schmidt. And now look. Look. Look what I did, in my greed._

“I know,” she said quietly. Her fingers carded through his hair gently. They felt cold against his skin. (Everything was cold, now. The snow had seeped into his dreams and marrow, and taken poisonous root.)

After a moment, she pushed him away gently, then stood up. Offered him a hand to help him to his feet.

Kissed him.

She did not say it was alright, and for that, he was grateful.

(Her skin was soft and warm beneath Steve’s fingertips, and he pressed his lips to every inch of her in prayer.)

The next day, they headed for the Hydra stronghold Zola had given up.

*

_“What is the modern theory of war?” Steve had asked Fury in the days after he had woken. “The thinking behind it, I mean.”_

_Fury had raised an eyebrow at him. “You asking for military strategy, or philosophy?”_

_He hadn’t known._

_The snow was still deep in his bones in the back of his mouth, like a bruise that had never quite healed._

_(When he dreamed, it was of Bucky’s pale face and Peggy’s red mouth and the snow, burying him until he couldn’t breathe.)_

*

Tony was back in the kitchen. The kids had gone to play somewhere - Nate’s unhappy remonstrations with Cooper’s efforts to keep him entertained were perfectly audible directly above them - and Tony evidently had a large enough coffee stash to have lasted him even through the shortage. Either that, or he’d had it flown it.

Either way, there was a French press on the hob and Tony was watching it carefully as he stood beside it, tapping a pen against the worktop.

“I thought you drank your coffee from the machine,” Steve said, his voice hoarse.

Tony looked up at him briefly. “Nespresso pods are not a priority good,” he said shortly. “This, and instant, is all that’s getting through right now.”

Of course. It was the aftermath of a war, however short; the rationing almost made it seem more normal. Or - not quite rationing, of course. Not of the goods themselves, but of the transportation and storage of them. Fresh produce was at a premium, and food trucks were delivering shelf-stable fare up and down the Tri-state area until the cold storage facilities could guarantee uninterrupted power.

(No one could guarantee uninterrupted power. The entire city-wide grid was down; when Iron Man wasn’t attending funerals, he was installing arc reactor technology block by block. The hospitals and water filtration plants had been first; everyone else was prioritised based on occupancy.)

The French press bubbled. Tony’s back was to Steve, the vulnerable nape of his neck exposed above the collar of his suit. The hair had grown a little longer there, longer than Steve had seen Tony wear it. He must have been about due for a haircut before the first attacks began, Steve thought, and then of course he wouldn’t have bothered with it.

He wanted to say something (what?) and cast about for some suitable words.

_Are you OK?_

_Does that mean I’m - you’re - does that mean -_

_Tony. Does that mean -_

“How long…” his words died in his throat. He coughed and tried again. “How long have you known?”

Tony turned at that, the French press in hand. He hesitated then set it carefully to one side, the coffee forgotten for the moment. “How long did I know what?” He asked. His voice was flat. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.” He folded his arms across his chest, his shoulders hunching. “How long have I known about the box? A couple of months. It was in Peggy Carter’s will. Sharon was rather put out by it.” He smiled mirthlessly. “How long have I known what was inside it? Two weeks.” _See?_ His eyes said, accusingly. _See what I did? I found this out, and I told you. I didn’t keep it from you. I_ told _you._

Steve closed his eyes. “Why did you tell me?” He asked, and it came out thin and bitter. “Or was it just to hurt? Was that why?” There was no winning here, he knew. If Tony had kept it from him… and that he had not… There was no soft landing, no positive spin. _Did you just want to rub it in my face? Show me something else I’ve lost?_

Tony swallowed. Outside, the light was fading, casting shadows across his face in thin slices of darkness. His mouth was trembling. “Go to hell,” he whispered. “You can go to fucking hell for that. Did you even read the letters?”

He had. He had stood in the study, the photocopies spread across the desk, and he had read every single word.

_My darling girl,_ every letter had started. Pages and pages of them in Peggy’s neat script, written for someone who would never see them.

_I’m so sorry, my darling girl,_ the letters said. _I have hidden you away, my love, to keep you safe. It is the only thing I can do for you. It is the only way I can be your mother._

_I miss you, my darling. I think of you every day._

They did not stop when the war ended, and Peggy moved to New York. They did not stop when the girl was grown, and they did not stop when she met Howard and they wed, Peggy unapologetic in her rage.

_When Howard told me you were engaged, I punched him. I am not sorry. He doesn’t understand why I am so angry, why I would act this way. He thinks it is because of your youth. Let him. Let him think that. It is better than knowing._

_I cannot imagine what could have possessed you to accept him, my darling girl. What I wanted for you…_

They did not not stop when her child - when _Tony_ \- was born.

_I look at you with your baby, and I miss holding you. I miss being your mother, my darling, for all that I was there for only a few minutes. I promise you, for those few minutes I was your mother I fought for you as strongly as you would fight for your son. I did all I could to keep you safe, to keep you out of harm’s way._

They did not stop when -

_I’m so sorry, my darling girl. I thought I had done enough. I thought I had kept you hidden, had kept you safe from them. I didn’t think they’d come after Howard. I didn’t think you’d be caught between it all._

_I’m so sorry for what I have to do. I hope you understand, my darling. It’s the only way to keep Tony safe. And he’s all I have left._

When -

_I love you, always._

In the photo, Tony had smiled up him, happy and oblivious.

He can see it now, in the man as well as the child. He can see Howard, and he can see Peggy.

(God. _God._ He can see _himself._ )

“Tony,” he said, his voice cracking. He reached out a hand. “Why did you tell me?”

Tony’s mouth was trembling. (His mother’s mouth.) “Maybe I wanted you to be sorry.”

He let the hand fall. “You know I am.” He said, and it felt… odd. Flat. He felt sorry, yes, but it is a sorrow for _Tony,_ not for the woman in the picture. He doesn’t know her. (He _doesn’t._ ) He felt a sorrow for Peggy, for Bucky, for Howard, even…

(Maybe for her. Maybe a little for her, because she had his mother’s mouth, and his hair, and because she was his, even if he hadn’t known. Even if the universe had conspired to keep her away from him.)

(It’s mostly for Tony, this sorrow. For Bucky. For Peggy. For Howard.)

(And yes. For _her_. The girl he can’t name, even in his own head, because he never knew her and he never will and it’s safer, it’s _safer_ that way.)

Tony stared at him, unmoving. Implacable.

“Tony. I’m _sorry._ ” It’s not enough. It hadn’t been enough in his letter - clumsy and useless and somehow making everything worse - and it wouldn’t be enough now. And still, he could not help himself, could not stop himself from pressing on the wound, from watching it bleed. “Why did you tell me, Tony?” _Why, when you could have kept it from me? When you could have hurt me in a way I could not protest?_ Because it would have been apt, wouldn’t it? It would have been justice, of a sort, for him to do that.

(It would have hurt less.)

Tony looked away, his shoulders hunching further. “You know, I never gave Howard enough credit,” he said, his voice hoarse. “When I was a kid and he’d go on and on about you, a part of me wanted to make him proud. Wanted him to care about me the same way he cared about you. And after he was dead, all I could think was, well, that’s a shitty and stupid thing to do to a kid. What kind of father expects his son to be the equal of Captain America?” When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “Do you think he knew? D’you think that’s why he married her?” He raised a hand and wiped at his eyes angrily. “I guess he wasn’t so stupid after all. Turns out he had a perfect reason to use you as the yardstick.”

Steve closed his eyes against the blow of that, feeling it land somewhere south of his ribs.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, uselessly. _I’m sorry for all of it. For everything I have done. For the war. For failing Bucky. For failing you. For failing_ her, _the child Peggy wrote to in the letters she never sent, and the woman in the photograph. I’m sorry for all of it, Tony. Please believe me._ He stepped forward, slow and careful, and raised his arms. When Tony did not protest, he wrapped his arms around him. “I’m sorry, Tony,” he said against Tony’s ear.

They stayed like that for one long moment. It was enough for Steve to feel something flicker alight in his chest.

(It wasn’t all lost. There was still hope.)

And then Tony stepped back and nodded, almost kindly. “I know. And I don’t care.”

*

The sun had set by the time he left, the papers and the photograph in his jacket pocket. Tony had not ordered him out again, but had merely watched him silently until he had finally given in and left.

He ran into the Bartons on his way out. “Steve,” Clint said, surprised, taking in his disheveled appearance. “Are you - visiting? You’re welcome to stay for dinner.” He looked at Laura as if for permission, and she nodded firmly.

“You’re always welcome, Steve,” she said. “There’s plenty of room. Stay.” She reached out a hand.

_You’re always welcome,_ when they had been inviting him to Tony’s home.

To his - his -

He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t _think_ it. The words sat fat and awkward in his mouth, as if they were hot stones he couldn’t think to spit out.

His -

(“It’s supposed to feel like this,” Peggy had said. “Because, otherwise, what would that make us?”)

“I need to go,” he muttered, and fled.

*

His phone rang a little after midnight.

“Hey, punk. Are you coming back to the Compound tonight?”

“No, Buck,” Steve said, dry-mouthed. His eyes were on the lights of the Stark mansion, and the faint movement of figures inside. “Not tonight.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I just needed to torture them all some more? (And yeah, I had to update the tags to add PTSD because no one can tell me that Steve went through the European theatre and then woke up 70 years in the future and his mental health is a-ok.)
> 
> And then it occurred to me that whatever I do to Steve and Tony, I also have to consider whether Steve then tells Bucky...


End file.
